PepsiCo’s (PEP) “Overweight” Rating Reiterated at Morgan Stanley

Morgan Stanley reiterated their overweight rating on shares of PepsiCo (NASDAQ:PEP) in a research report released on Thursday morning, AnalystRatings.com reports. They currently have a $137.00 price objective on the stock, up from their prior price objective of $130.00.

Several other equities research analysts have also recently commented on PEP. BidaskClub cut shares of PepsiCo from a buy rating to a hold rating in a research report on Tuesday, April 9th. Zacks Investment Research cut shares of PepsiCo from a hold rating to a sell rating in a research report on Wednesday, January 23rd. Royal Bank of Canada reiterated a neutral rating and issued a $115.00 price target on shares of PepsiCo in a research report on Thursday. Bank of America reiterated a buy rating and issued a $135.00 price target (up from $130.00) on shares of PepsiCo in a research report on Thursday. Finally, Deutsche Bank boosted their price target on shares of PepsiCo from $120.00 to $131.00 and gave the stock a hold rating in a research report on Thursday. Two investment analysts have rated the stock with a sell rating, thirteen have issued a hold rating and nine have given a buy rating to the stock. The stock has an average rating of Hold and an average target price of $123.00.

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Shares of PepsiCo stock opened at $127.09 on Thursday. The company has a current ratio of 0.94, a quick ratio of 0.85 and a debt-to-equity ratio of 1.99. PepsiCo has a 52 week low of $95.94 and a 52 week high of $128.26. The stock has a market capitalization of $178.16 billion, a price-to-earnings ratio of 22.45, a price-to-earnings-growth ratio of 3.12 and a beta of 0.65.

PepsiCo (NASDAQ:PEP) last issued its quarterly earnings results on Wednesday, April 17th. The company reported $0.97 EPS for the quarter, topping the consensus estimate of $0.92 by $0.05. PepsiCo had a net margin of 19.37% and a return on equity of 65.12%. The firm had revenue of $12.88 billion for the quarter, compared to analysts’ expectations of $12.68 billion. During the same period in the previous year, the business earned $0.96 earnings per share. PepsiCo’s revenue for the quarter was up 2.6% compared to the same quarter last year. As a group, analysts predict that PepsiCo will post 5.51 earnings per share for the current year.

The business also recently disclosed a quarterly dividend, which was paid on Friday, March 29th. Shareholders of record on Friday, March 1st were issued a dividend of $0.9275 per share. The ex-dividend date was Thursday, February 28th. This represents a $3.71 annualized dividend and a yield of 2.92%. PepsiCo’s payout ratio is presently 65.55%.

In other PepsiCo news, CEO Vivek Sankaran sold 13,000 shares of the business’s stock in a transaction dated Thursday, March 7th. The stock was sold at an average price of $117.28, for a total transaction of $1,524,640.00. Following the sale, the chief executive officer now owns 90,379 shares in the company, valued at approximately $10,599,649.12. The transaction was disclosed in a filing with the SEC, which is available through this link. 0.28% of the stock is currently owned by insiders.

A number of hedge funds and other institutional investors have recently bought and sold shares of PEP. Oregon Public Employees Retirement Fund grew its stake in PepsiCo by 10,622.9% during the 4th quarter. Oregon Public Employees Retirement Fund now owns 34,704,199 shares of the company’s stock valued at $314,000 after acquiring an additional 34,380,553 shares in the last quarter. Bank of New York Mellon Corp grew its stake in shares of PepsiCo by 3,272,537.9% in the 3rd quarter. Bank of New York Mellon Corp now owns 19,930,365 shares of the company’s stock valued at $2,228,213,000 after buying an additional 19,929,756 shares in the last quarter. Norges Bank bought a new stake in shares of PepsiCo in the 4th quarter valued at approximately $1,565,004,000. Matthew Goff Investment Advisor LLC grew its stake in shares of PepsiCo by 10,787.1% in the 3rd quarter. Matthew Goff Investment Advisor LLC now owns 4,492,767 shares of the company’s stock valued at $41,267,000 after buying an additional 4,451,500 shares in the last quarter. Finally, BlackRock Inc. grew its stake in shares of PepsiCo by 2.4% in the 4th quarter. BlackRock Inc. now owns 97,102,071 shares of the company’s stock valued at $10,727,836,000 after buying an additional 2,275,511 shares in the last quarter. Hedge funds and other institutional investors own 72.30% of the company’s stock.